Face the Truth
by Visinata
Summary: WAYWARD SON SPOILERS! A continuation of the beach scene - a conversation I wish they could have had. This isn't a fluffy, happy ending, but it is hopeful. The passage in italics at the beginning is a quotation directly from the ending of Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell. The title comes from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.


_"__Why can't you just admit that you'd be happier here?"_

_I raise my voice: "Why can't you see that I wouldn't be happy anywhere without you?"_

_He sits back, like I've slapped him._

_"__Simon… " I whisper._

_I wait for him to _get_ it. To finally give in to it._

_Or maybe to say I've passed the test._

_Instead he shakes his head. "Baz… " His voice is barely there. _

"When someone shows you who they are… " He stops and throws a glance my way, takes a deep shuddering breath. He's crying. And my stomach sinks. He looks down at the sand and if I didn't have the acute hearing of the undead I'd miss his next words.

" …you should believe them."

"I do, Simon." I start to push myself up from the sand, to go to him. But I stop myself. I don't know if I'm welcome.

"I do believe you," I say again. "You've shown me over and over who you are and I believe you. I believe in you." And I've done fuck all over the past months to tell him all the good I still see in him. Little wonder he's pulled away. Hope is biting at my ankles. This is something I can mend. When he turns his head to look at me I'm smiling.

He's not.

His forehead is screwed up and his brow down, like I'm wrong. He shakes his head. "No, Baz. I don't mean who I _used_ to be. All I've shown you for months is that I'm a colossal fuckup. It's so obvious I'm broken. You can stop pretending that you don't see it."

"But I don't. I've never seen you that way."

"Can you _please _stop pretending that I'm the same person I was?" his voice is growing with irritation.

"Do you _not_ want me to see good things in you?"

"_I _don't see good things in me." His voice drops back down to a whisper. "I want to be away from you so you'll stop acting like you _do_."

I think all three of us know that Simon's been depressed. Even though we've all ignored it, tried to carry on as usual. Well, Bunce and I have. As always Simon's the only one brave enough to face his battles head-on. He's the only one who hasn't been making believe nothing's changed.

The least I can do is try to show him I'm willing to meet him where he is. I'll follow where he leads, for as long as he'll let me.

I clear my throat. "Can we try something?"

"What?"

"Something difficult."_ Is he still willing to rise to a challenge?_

"What?" he says again, frustration rising.

"Can we, just for right now, talk to each other and be completely one hundred percent honest? No half-truths, no leaving anything out? Even if it hurts?"

"You want to cast 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?'"

"I'll cast it if you want me to, but I thought we could follow the principles, without the illegal magic."

He levels a hard stare at me, like it's fifth year and he's caught me draining a rat, then he looks out over the Pacific. "You first."

_Okay. I can do this. It was my idea. _

"The truth is that I'm afraid you're trying to break up with me, and I don't want you to."

"Is that the whole truth?" he asks.

"No."

He closes his eyes, but mine are glued to him.

"The whole truth is that I've been pulling farther and farther away from you for months because I feel you pushing. Because I'm terrified that one day I'll come on too strong and you'll end it."

He's quiet for a moment.

"That would be better though, for you. Ending it."

"How on earth would that be better?"

"You'd be able to move on. Find someone better. Someone more like you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" _Someone more magickal? More Marks and Spencer? More undead?_

He shrugs.

"I feel like you're trying to pick holes in my truth without telling me any of yours."

He's quiet. The moment stretches until I wonder if he's going to respond at all. Then he hitches his shoulders up and says, "Fine. My truth is that you're right. I've been putting off breaking up with you for months."

I suck in a breath and I swear my vision starts to tunnel. I knew it. But also, I didn't know it.

"Is that the whole truth?" I ask, my voice tight. I'm proud I'm able to keep it from wavering.

He shifts in the sand and lays the leg nearest to me flat, his bare foot extending into the surf. "I was putting it off, but I was about to do it. The day Penny told us about this trip. She interrupted me, actually."

I pull my legs into my chest and lean forward.

I hear Simon's voice from beyond the fog beginning to settle in my head. "Do you want me to keep being honest?"

_Merlin, is he not done yet? No. I absolutely do not want hear any more of this._

"Yes."

"That's what I was trying to say to you just now, before you started with this truth-telling, that I'm letting you go."

I squeeze my eyes closed and bend forwards, pressing my nose into the crease between my knees, trying to remember how to breathe. I need a minute. To fight through the panic.

When I can breathe again, I straighten up. I've been afraid this moment was coming since he kissed me in the forest. But I hoped if we didn't talk about it we could avoid it. I guess we're beyond that now. I can't stay with him and pretend anymore. (I would. If he would let me.)

This time I don't make an effort to steady my voice. (We're being painfully honest, after all.) "When did you stop wanting me?"

"Stop wanting you? Hell, Baz, I never fucking stopped." He spits the next words at me, "The _whole truth_, if you really want to know it, is that I'm doing this for _you_. Because your misplaced sense of honor is preventing you from doing the right thing."

_The absolute idiot. _"How can you think not being with you is the right thing?"

"It's obvious, Innit?" He's stood up now, pacing. I follow him to my feet, to keep him from towering over me. "I mean," he says, "this trip was different, we were doing okay—you and me—up until Las Vegas. But it's not reality, yeah? Back home I could see how you didn't want to come near me, didn't even want to look at me. I know I'm a mess. I'm the kind of thing you've _never_ had time for. I'm not as oblivious as you think I am."

"How are you standing there trying to tell me what I think? You don't get to _do_ that. You only get to tell me what _you_ think!" I'm struggling to find the line between yelling and crying but I think maybe I'm doing both. A little.

Simon's lost all his bluster. Now he's laser focused. "What _I _think is that you should be grateful, for the favor I'm doing you."

"This is the opposite of a favor. Simon, you can't—

"Don't tell me what to do!" he yells. This feels like the fight in the hotel room, the let's-break-it-because-we-can't-fix-it worst we can do to each other. My boyfriend (but not for much longer) plows ahead. It's surreal how beautiful he looks—his sun-kissed curls glinting in the light reflecting off the waves—as he breaks my heart. "I'm letting you go, Baz. I'm releasing you. From your promises. All of them. You don't have to pretend you're in love with me anymore. You don't have to force yourself choose me for the rest of your life. You can stop feeling sorry for me."

"You don't get to make that choice for me! You don't get to make any of those choices for me! Merlin and Morgana Snow, you don't get to tell me how I _feel_!"

"Why can't you take your head out of your arse Baz, and see that I'm setting you free?"

"Free?" I'm too loud. Verging on hysterical. "You'd like to imagine you're freeing me like a butterfly, wouldn't you?"

His tirade over he's already closing in on himself. He shrugs again, and half nods.

"That you're going to open your hands and I'll fly up and away and have the most marvelous life." I'm crying and yelling.

"Yeah. Yes," he says. "That's what I want for you, the best life you can have. I— I want everything good for you." Tears are falling down his face now too, leaving tracks across the galaxy of new freckles crowding his American tan.

"Well, that's not what I am, Snow. I'm not a fucking butterfly." I pull my wand out of my sleeve and point it at the sand. "**Greater than the sum of its parts**," I cast, and the grains of sand come together and melt as though they've been through a furnace. I draw a shape in the air with my wand and the pool of glass twists and opens into a palm-sized glass heart, thin-walled and hollow. Not soft like my heart, but just as fragile. I pick it up. Then I reach for one of Simon's hands, where it's hanging by his side. He flinches, but lets me bring it up, so we're holding my heart together, between our hands.

"On the count of three," I say.

He nods.

When we move our hands apart Simon looks up as if he expects to see the glass heart rising. As though being made of magic is enough to keep something afloat. He startles when it hits the hard, wet sand and shatters.

"That's what setting me free looks like. This is what happens to me if you go away." I watch him. I wait for him to finally _see_. To understand what he's doing to me.

Simon is looking down at the glass fragments, barely distinguishable now from the sand that made them. He's biting his lower lip. When he looks up he frowns. "Are you going to try killing yourself again? If I break up with you? Is that what you mean? That you'd kill yourself because of me?"

"No Snow. Fuck a nine toed troll. I was never gong to kill myself because of you. It was always because of me. Because of what I am. But I don't plan on doing it any time soon."

"Shit, Baz." He runs his hand through his hair. It's a twisted, salty mess. And I love it. "I thought you were okay now. I thought you were done with the suicidal thoughts, yeah?"

"I am. Really. Most of the time. It's just… after meeting those other vampires—"

"Lamb," he interjects, with a growl. "Tell the whole truth."

"Yes. Fine. After meeting Lamb… taking to him, and after surviving being shot in the chest multiple times, I can't ignore the fact that I truly am immortal, and I don't want that. So I'm still going to have to end myself… when the time comes. But I want to live a nice long life first, with you."

I look up and find for the first time in this conversation that Snow's eyes are pinned on me. I'm drowning in the blue.

"I can't believe you have that much control over your own mortality," he mumbles.

"We all do, Snow."

He hassles his hair again. Then lets his hand fall abruptly.

"Fucking hell Baz. I don't want to think about you dying. He pulls me into his arms. And it's more of a wrestlers hold than a hug. Neither of us willing to give an inch. "I couldn't bear to lose you."

I push away enough that I can see his face, but my arms still hold him tight. "Then why are you breaking up with me? _Are _you still breaking up with me?"

I think… yes. Maybe. It's for the best, yeah? I just— there's something between us, something in me, that's in the way, that I have to deal with first."

_First. If there's a first, then maybe there's a second. An after. Then maybe this isn't over. Please don't let it be over. _I feel the warmth of him, the solid weight in my arms and I can't make myself believe that this is the end.

"So you don't want to lose me," I have to stop and swallow before I can go on. "But you still want to break up with me?"

"For a while," he clarifies. "While I get my head on straight. Maybe you can get some therapy. Try to deal with your death wish."

"It's not death wish. It's vampirism."

"Speaking of vampires," he says, pushing me all the way off him and sitting down on the edge of the surf again, "we're still being honest, yeah?"

"Yes," I say. I don't like where this is going. I _really_ don't like the sudden distance between us. I sit down on the same plane as Simon this time, a foot away. I resist the urge to touch him.

"Tell me what you really think of Lamb. Are you attracted to him? Did you want to be with him at all? How did it feel to spend time with someone like you? Are you really sure you don't want to stay in Vegas? Remember, you have to tell the whole truth."

"That's… a lot of questions, Simon."

"Then start with one. Are you attracted to him?"

I take a moment to think. So he knows I'm taking his question seriously. Even though it's a ridiculous question.

"I think he's a good looking bloke, objectively."

Simon clenches his fist by his side.

"Did you enjoy spending time with him?"

"It was stressful, but informative."

"You didn't _seem_ stressed." He's looking at me with eyes narrowed, jaw in fighting stance, knuckles white." In fact, you seemed pretty fucking relaxed."

I sigh. "Is this about the alcohol?"

"Among other things," he mumbles. Then louder, "You say it's boring, drinking. _I'm_ supposed to be your boyfriend and you won't so much as have a cider with me, but when Lamb offered you a drink—multiple drinks—you practically _jumped _at it. Didn't even hesitate. You didn't _look_ like you were bored, Baz."

"I was trying to fit in," I say. It sounds like a pathetic excuse, even to me. Simon keeps glaring.

"I'll share a cider with you when we get home," I say. "I'd rather be bored than on the verge of biting someone."

"Were you? On the verge?"

"I've never been so close. Or so disgusted. You saw me after. It's… unpleasant to come so close to losing my grip on who I'd like to think am." _Is that how Simon feels without his magic? Untethered? Like he's losing the battle for himself? _I don't want to say the next bit, but the honesty was my idea. I'll burn through all my secrets if I have to, for him. "Afterwards, After all the birds, and the blood, I was so ashamed, Simon. I never want to be away from you, but when I've done something as desperate and disgusting as that I don't want anyone to see me. Especially not anyone I care about. Especially not you. I feel like a wild animal that no one ought to love." I scoot my hand over closer to him and hope he'll take it. He doesn't. But he relaxes his fist and his jaw, tips his head so he's looking at me, from an angle.

"Lamb could teach you things about yourself, you know. Things you'll never learn anywhere else. Don't you want to stay for that?"

"No. I really don't. And I learned plenty."

"Like what?" Simon narrows his eyes again.

"That I'm immortal, that if I work at it I can stop my fangs from dropping when I eat… and that I might be able to bite a person without turning them or slaughtering them."

"Shit," Simon says. "That's, well… that last one's a real mindfuck, isn't it?"

"Truly."

"Does that make you less afraid? Of accidentally biting someone?"

"I'm honestly not sure if it makes me less afraid or more."

"Do you want to bite me?" Simon asks.

_Is he offering, or just curious?_ "Constantly. It's a daily struggle."

"Don't joke, Baz."

I raise my eyebrows at him.

He swallows. "But you never do. Bite me."

"As hard as it is to stop myself sometimes, it's so much harder to imagine hurting the person who loves me most in the world."

He's never told me he loves me; I'm taking a huge risk. But he doesn't contradict me. Or freeze. Or bluster. He just turns all the way around to face me, and he's looking softer, expanded. Less pinched than he has for this whole conversation.

"Baz… "

"Simon?"

"I wanted to be the one to tell you that. That I love you."

"I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. I've wanted to tell you for so long. I don't know if I was ever going to do it." He pauses and finally reaches for my hand. "I love you so much. SO much." We're twelve inches apart, staring into each others' eyes like the sun is about to set on the happy ever after in one of Daphne's_ It's a Magickal Christmas_ films.

But it's not. We're still breaking up, right? Right?

I squeeze his hand, so very gently. "If you love me, and I love you… maybe we can stay together while we work things out?"

He tugs on my hand and pulls me so I'm leaning into him. He's warm and he smells like burnt toast and salt air.

"I don't know, Baz. I don't think I'm ready to commit to anything. I have some things I need to do for myself, and I think you do too. But If you're willing to not have any expectations, I think I'd rather stay boyfriends while we do it."

_I can live with that,_ I think._ For now. _


End file.
